Friday, January 25, 2013

You must be familiar with Giveaway of the Day (GOTD). It’s a popular website that hosts software giveaway everyday, all round the year. Each software offered on the site is free only on that particular day and should be downloaded, installed and activated on the same day. A protection software included with the download makes sure that you cannot install the program once the 24 hour giveaway period has expired, even if you’ve still got the installer.

But there was a weakness in the Giveaway of the day wrapper that was exploited last year to extract the original installer of the program. Without the security of the wrapper, this program could then be installed at any date irrespective of the current giveaway at GOTD. It took the website’s programmers a few months before the loophole was fixed. The exploit doesn’t work anymore.

The new wrapper is more secure that stops people from keeping the software for future installs and it reportedly utilizes a technology similar to rootkits. But the wrapper’s security has been broken once again, this time by Maximus, a member of the cracking group REVENGE Crew. It is a tiny portable executable, that allows you to extract the original setup installer from the new wrapper and keep it for later use, just like before.

This is how to use it: First, download the software from Giveaway of the Day and extract the contents of the ZIP file to a folder. Inside there will be a Readme.txt which will contain serial numbers, a Setup.exe and a Setup.gcd. Now run the UnWrapper GOTD executable and it will popup a dialog box asking you where the extracted Setup.exe file is. Simply locate and double click on the file.

The setup procedure will then launch the Activating window will show while the server is being contacted. Then you should receive a popup box telling you that the original installer has been saved in the same folder as the GOTD setup executable.

Open the folder where you extracted the GOTD zip file and the program installer should be there. You can proceed with the installation that was already started, or cancel it if you don’t want to install the software right now.

I don't believe that this is just my issue, if you look on the linked site you will see in the comments there that others have experienced the same issue. I think that this is an issue for 64 bit systems.

Tried this on two computers, both running Win 7 x64. On one I was logged into a standard account and got the usual pop up wanting administrator permission to run the file. Gave the permission and got the error message. On the other computer I was logged in as the only user and the it worked perfectly and produced the wrapperless setup file. Looks like a possible problem with running the program from a standard account. Wouldn't be the first time it's happened.

I think the GOTD wrapper extracts the installer and temporarily stores it in a location that is protected through file permissions. This is why a standard user is denied access to the file and the unwrapper fails. But on an admin account, the file permissions are overridden and the unwrapper works.

For those who are having problems, one thing you can try is the following.

1: Open up your TEMP Directory and scroll to the bottom because the UnWrapper is about to store a DLL file there for temporary use.

2: Run the UnWrapper and select the file. While the UnWrapper is running proceed to step 3

3: Copy GOTD_mydll_1.dll from your TEMP Directory and paste it into the SAME Directory that your running the UnWrapper from.

Once you get the error message, exit the software and then open it up again and try again -- it should work without any problems. If you continue to experience problems, try copying "GOTD_mydll_1.dll" to the same directory as the file that you're trying to UnWrap and try again.

Finally got it to work! Even though I'm using an Admin account I right clicked Unwrapper and chose Run as Admin and all worked fine. Thank you for this tool and I hope maybe others can get it to work this way too.